Month: October 2016

Let’s put a few things together to start the ball rolling on taking NorCal Rapist seriously. He can still be prosecuted in Sacramento County because his DNA was filed against by Ann Marie Shubert when she was assistant DA. This has circumvented Statute of Limitations.

To put a few things in a nutshell, NorCal was active between 1991 and 2006 over northern California. His rapes were carefully, very carefully preplanned. He was a home invader. He taunted. He was sarcastic and arrogant and in some ways was a performer for his victims in the way that the Phantom of the Opera might set up the scene to perform before his captured beloved.

But there was no style to him at all. There is no way at the present time, from the information I have, to backwork his stalking MO. The two locations that I know of were off a main road to the local highway. The overall pattern shows how he used the highways strategically. He obviously traveled far distances, thus earning the nickname “NorCal” for Northern California Rapist.

The number and location of his attacks. The attack in Chico (No. 7) is not on the map.

Over the extent of his attacks he achieved 2 scars. One victim gave him a scar over his right eye. Another on his left forearm. Put together with a few facts such a person becomes traceable to all out there with an inclination to do so.

His ability to travel over a fairly wide area means he probably had a job that allowed him to travel. That seems rather basic. But no one has figured how he selected these victims. With EAR/ONS, the No 1 serial predator and home invader in California history, his stalking tells us how. He basically canvassed neighborhoods. NorCal didn’t do that, I’m sure of it. But he had stalked them first . . . somehow.

The first occupation of choice is always some county employee– sewer-water-lineman– who would need to visit the neighborhood professionally. Or, of course, a tradesman. Neither fit, I think here. Unless he is visiting the victim professionally, visiting a neighborhood will not reveal anything about a homeowner if they are not present.

Somewhere he was attracted to them.

This gives us the options of traveling barman or, someone to do with catering or vending.

I like barman or catering, so let’s start with those options.

NorCal always showered before his attacks and had no work odor. Basic, grubby work odor is often nonspecific. Barman and caterer/cook is specific odor. On a barman it will be smoke, the specific smoke smell of a bar. And if he first was attracted to his victims while serving in a bar, he wouldn’t want that odor detected on him by the victim. Odors suddenly bring back memories to us. Caterer/cook would be the same thing. Cooking odors are specific. A bad wonton goes a long way. Grease, oils, grilling odors.

To test this hypothesis, we have the following profile:

NorCal would be in his 40s or early 50s by now. His weight has fluctuated, but at his last attack in 2006 he was quite heavy. He has a distinctive scar along or over his right eye and on his left forearm. He may be or have been a traveling barman or cook/caterer.

At the very least he was someone who could fit in with scars on him and they would not seem too out of place. These are not excessively distinctive scars. They are not the mark of banished Cain.

In 2006 he was driving a white Toyota 4runner, two tone– silver bottom/white top. It was captured on surveillance footage before his double attack on Ivycrest in North Natomas in North Sacramento. So at this time he had a distinctive car, weight and two scars.

In the next NorCal post we will start to go into the details of how much attention he paid to his victims. It is especially apparent with his last victims.

* * *

Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.

For 15 years I have sought the body of Alexander the Great. It is the greatest relic of civilization, and all my attempts to locate it have led me to the Nabi Daniel Mosque to the closed doors behind which his body is fervently protected by the Cheihs of Islam.

The others who have been my rivals are content to believe that his body is the one in the catafalque, venerated as the prophet Daniel from the Bible. Everything about the legend of Daniel and the Nabi Daniel mosque, however, describes Alexander the Great. The legends bespeak of being hatched by the educated cheihs who did all they could to protect his body from the rapine of the intolerant conquerors. No denigration was to befall Iskander. He is the “King of the Greeks” mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Daniel, of course. He is the embodiment of all that sets a young man’s heart to burn– young, set free from the box in which we live and think and to conquer the world with his boyhood companions.

From the earliest of times the legends spoke of the mosque of the “Sire with the Two Horns” over which was built the Nabi Daniel. There is no quester for Alexander who does no know what that means. It comes from the Alexandrian image of the great conqueror on the coins and roundels– Alexander wearing the diadem of Amun with the two horns.

Unlike my rivals, and for so they are, I do not believe his is the body in the catafalque. Tradition holds 2 bodies are there– Daniel and a companion. Some of those before me are content to believe that the mosque was built over the Royal SOMA that carried his soma– body– and perhaps this image inspired the name of the mosque. There is little reason to disagree. But what body was eventually brought up and placed in the catafalque much later when the Nabi Daniel mosque was built?

Alexandria was leveled to rubble long before the Muslim conquests when in the great earthquake of 365 AD struck. The priests of his cult would have found him, but they would have secured him somewhere now that his great cone-shaped tomb had been destroyed.

Curiously, no Ptolemaic tomb has been found. No item or artifact has ever turned up, indicating that they too remain intact below, buried near Alexander in the vast necropolis complex collectively known as The SOMA after his body.

Many centuries, many centuries went by before the Nabi Daniel was built on the site over the ramshackle precursor of the Dzoul Karnien (Sire of the Two Horns). Many centuries before the legend of Daniel was made to fit. But what bodies were brought up from the necropolis below? The last internments had been Antony and Cleopatra, and I tend to believe that their bodies were the ones brought up– two unidentified bodies to take the place of Daniel and his friend Sidi Lokum.

But Iskander remained below. He remained below in his crystal coffin, the golden sandals still on his feet.

His body had been venerated in the ancient world. His tomb was open, like Macedonian tombs, and it was crowded with gifts. A treasure developed around him, set amongst his helmet, shield, greaves, and breastplate. Caesar wept over him. Augustus kissed him. That knave Caligula stole his helmet and wore it in a horse race.

Ironically the tomb and body of one of the greatest humans to ever live has vanished. Yes, the priests of his cult would have retrieved the body and placed him somewhere safe in the maze of marble-lined tunnels below. They have been glimpsed. People have been shooed out. Passageways have been bricked up.

Perhaps some of my rivals prefer to believe that his body is in the catafalque because it is protected against the radicals there. But I think it is not. No Muslim king would desecrate it, but we do not speak of kings when we speak of radicals.

All the world has always wondered why no Ptolemaic tomb has ever been found. But the idea that the necropolis fell into the sea has no merit. The location of the SOMA was known, and the modern streets trace the two main cross streets of the ancient city where it had been located.

In later posts we will go through an antiquarian history from great and small who tried to find, and some who even claim to have seen, the body of the “prophet Iskander” deep below the modern city of Alexandria.

* * *

Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.

How often we use the word. . . .and we don’t realize we use it correctly. Ghosts cannot haunt. There are no ghosts in a room except those we bring ourselves. This is the true haunting. This has driven men mad.

No haunting can be explicit. It must be implicit else it is not a haunting. If Sir Percy carried his head under his arm every night at 10 and walked down the passageways of the old castle he would become a spot of bother . . . but we would get used to him and he would cease to be a haunt anymore. Without fear there is no haunt.

It is the subjective nature of a haunting that makes it a source of terror. We interpret little events. Things go missing. They reappear. A shadow speeds past, seen in the corner of our eye. In one real case, a couple continued to find stubble in their bathroom sink each morning, as though a man had shaved there early each morning. They dug into the past of the house and found that a man had killed himself there.

We begin to put things together like the above– searching the past of the house. If we find something grave, we begin to convince ourselves there is a ghost. Now if a floorboard creaks, it means something nefarious. Chills seize us and we clutch ourselves. We fancy something has passed. The bed feels like someone has sat down on it. We bolt up.

Altogether we work ourselves into a frenzy. We live in a haunted house. We are being haunted.

It doesn’t matter if it is a real ghost, if such there are. All hauntings remain subjective. They are the collective result of our own minds terrorizing us from the tidbits of real facts that have happened about us, facts testifying to the unusual or abnormal that we do not feel should be going on in a house.

Our shoulders cringe together when we enter a dark room. Our eyes dart back and forth rapidly until the flick of the light switch vanquishes the unknown.

Such is a haunting. It is the synthesis of fear. It breaks out into a full terror from the littlest things.

The original The Haunting was frustrating because it was so subjective, the movie less so than the book by Shirley Jackson. But it reflects the truth of the real thing, and it can happen to any of us. It doesn’t matter if you believe or do not believe in ghosts. A haunting comes from within us. You cannot escape it. You often cannot exorcise it. People simply leave the house. A legend builds behind them of a haunted house, but there are those who come after who experience nothing unusual. Then there are those that do.

Was the house truly haunted then? Yes. Without people there can be no haunting.

In each case of haunted house, however, the truth becomes obscured by the sensation. We love haunted houses. Borley Rectory was the first. A strange old Victorian brick rectory with a bricked up window and dank courtyard of many echoes. A strange family in the Bulls, reports of a black shrouded nun, footsteps on the floorboards and even “Don’t Carlos, don’t” echoing through the walls while the rector stood at the top of the stairs, squarely amazed. But this seems like nothing compared to what Harry Price spun about it.

Borley inspired Dorothy Macardle’s The Uninvited. It also inspired Jackson’s superb The Haunting of Hill House. Eventually it came to inspired The Legend of Hell House.

But we were too sophisticated in the 1970s to want ghosts. Amityville Horror gave us demons we could assail or retreat before. Flies swarmed in winter, other strange events happened. A family fled in terror. Bank and bunk have been made of much afterward, but events and the history of the house came together to inspire the perfect subjective haunting that became grossly explicit in the movie franchise.

Was Arthur C. Clarke right? Noting that our eyes are a lens and our brain the screen upon which we see, can something reverse this and turn the brain into a projector, transmitting an image from within us onto the lens? When someone sees the dark hooded figure, a faceless void, is the brain projecting the image onto the retina and we see it in the room? Then the haunting truly comes from within.

In many cases, both famous and obscure, there is some dark, draped shroud moving about, robed in night and death, clothed from our fears. Black coaches, black cats, and we find a history of black deeds. A skull was found in the cupboard at Borley. A whole family had been gunned down at Amityville.

It’s not enough to say there are no ghosts. It is not enough to say “Get a hold of yourself.” The creaking boards come back. We wait apprehensively if that dark specter we’ve heard about or seen may, just may appear. We have enough! We say it is real. We take comfort that it wasn’t just something within us. We move out. We are free.

Nevertheless, a haunting will and must always remain subject. It must pry subtly upon our minds, eating away until we finally have enough.

The rest of us shrug and wonder. Was our friend truly haunted? Yes. But by what?

* * *

Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.

It is that witching time of the year again. That time when even the most insulated of us likes to seek a chill and thrill. I must admit for someone who does what I do for a hobby it is ironic that my preferred Halloween fare is Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. But I must equally admit that of all the mysteries I have pursued for the last 26 years the hunt for the human predator is the most stimulating and exciting. Perhaps it’s the English sporting spirit in me, though I am not English. Perhaps it is the Borgia blood. I’m often jibed for being descended of the Borgias, Cesare in particular, because I never thought anything of it.

Biography bores me, including of my ancestors, so I know little of the Borgia beyond watching Orson Wells in Prince of Foxes. I know that Savonarola called Rodrigo an “abomination” and Grand daddy hung him over the fire, but I’d do the same if someone called me that. The Savonarolas were scabs. I’d go after the whole family. That’s Italian politics to this day.

I’ve seldom confessed to having an intellectual desire to investigate an old manor supposedly haunted, in the vein of Legend of Hell House or The Haunting. There are those who know I have looked into a hitherto unknown case in Tahoe. Friends tell me of another ongoing in which things are found missing or moved in the house and the wife, a redhead of Irish heritage of course, is documenting how many times this happens. I will be kept up to date. The previous owner died in the house, and naturally theory falls to targeting the previous owner, who died slowly of a terrible disease. I had met her myself once. In her few times she could come outside and work in her yard, she would notice me ambling about town, as I am known as “the walker.” On the occasion I walked past with a new, short haircut, she said in a friendly way: “You must be trying to get a job.”

My hair is long again, down to my shoulders, but I try and keep it in a Renaissance way, so I don’t look like a bum. It makes me look smarter, and considering the topics I investigate I guess it is good to do whatever I can to fool the people.

I often feel that if I investigated claims of hauntings more, I would have no need to fear from an evil spirit. The Borgias always stuck together, and no one wanted to deal with one dead or alive.

On a serious note, how to collate what is genuine and consistent in reports of hauntings? The current case in Glasgow is only confirmed as a poltergeist, and many feel that such events are entirely an electromagnetic manifestation, perhaps even a transient vortex rising up from the core of the planet due to some passing vagary.

What power can fear do to rearrange the EMR of an individual so that “things” happen?

The human brain has the power to transmute the body, but it does not have the energy source. There is simply not enough available to give its massive, divine powers the ability to physically morph enough.

The case of the somnambulist is one in point. Even Arthur C. Clark was fascinated by it. As a young man he had to be tied down in bed with ropes around his forearms. One day when adult he was in surgery. In such a deep sleep as created by the anesthesia the brain was signaled somehow to relive the past. There before the surprised eyes of the doctors the rope marks returned, created by the brain into the skin and flesh of his forearms. Genuine power of creation by thought . . .but limited to the inner universe.

In an evil, frenzied moment, a madman’s face might morph slightly, drawn back more than just with the grimace of evil, but distorting by the power of his wicked brain as he kills. If you have ever experienced the moment in someone, you know there is that point where the face cannot conceal what is in the heart. Even animals can sense that moment of blood rage and back off.

The brain, the power of the body’s EMR– who knows what a kilter in either can do.

Tests have been done with magnets at the base of the brain (placed on the outside of the skull). Apocalyptic dreams and images of UFOs appear in the brain.

Those who experience what they believe to be ghosts frequently report a dark, hooded figure. But is the wish the father of the thought? This report is the one genuine report from Borley Rectory before Harry Price created all his nonsense. I know it is reported elsewhere. In the case I personally know of in Tahoe, it too is what was seen. The beholder is panic stricken. But are they seeing a projection from their brain or is there something there?

The Catholic Church is most articulate on the matter of ghosts. A person’s spirit may be allowed to return by divine wish. It is rare and brief and then no more. No one can conjure the dead. Mediumship is fake. But the Catholic Church believes demons can run amok. This is the assertion behind anything real that might have happened at 112 Ocean Avenue by those who are Catholic and believe in some of the accounts. It is not the opinion of the Church proper.

So this month, let’s probe into some esoteric mysteries here in between those that are more concrete in their evil– in the cold case murders. Let us try and understand the reports through the history of mankind of fantasma. In our next post let’s dissect what a haunting truly is, and why it is hard to escape it and explain it.

“There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”

* * *

Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.